An Essay on the Animorphs
by o0tyarah0o
Summary: Why the fuck does this have reviews.


Animorphs. Animal morphers.

Six kids randomly picked to battle alien slugs to the point of death. Six kids, six teenagers who are expected to save the world.

Jake. The Leader.

Marco. The Cynic.

Rachel. The Warrior.

Cassie. The Pacifist.

Tobias. The Dreamer.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. The Outsider.

Who are they?

What are they?

_Animorphs_ is a fictional book series created by K.A. Applegate, the author of Making Out, Everworld, Remnants, and several other novels. Animorphs was by far one of her better works, the story of six kids and their dog. Okay, it was Jake's dog. But arguably an important character, being Jake's first morph.

Who are they?

Jake is the author of the first book. He's smart, decisive, quick, yet described by teachers as being one of their slower students, slow to commit and hesitant to fully apply himself. Before the war, Jake was a nobody. A kid full of potential, but nothing to prove it. An aimless teenager so many of us can relate to.

Jake was probably the most life-like character of the lot. His victories, his fears, his life was very realistic. He lived in an ordinary home, had an ordinary family. He had an older brother whose very Nike's he worshipped, parents who loved him, a dog named Homer. He liked to play basketball, and while not extremely popular, he had friends. That was before the war. Before his entire world was rocked. Before he found out the truth about his older brother Tom.

One night, Jake was hanging out with his best friend Marco, playing video games in the arcade at the local mall. As usual (according to Marco, anyway), he was losing. Finally conceding to defeat (and the fact that he was out of money), he and Marco were preparing to return home when they bumped into a boy named Tobias, who was of Jake's acquaintance. Having nowhere to go, Tobias asked if he could walk with them for awhile, as he was alone and it was night. Jake and Marco conceded, although Marco and Tobias weren't very friendly with each other. As they walked toward the entrance, they met Jake's cousin Rachel and her best friend Cassie, who were also preparing to return home. Cassie, unbeknownst to Jake, was attracted to him and insecure about her looks and heritage when in his presence.

The six walked together for a time, finally arriving at an old abandoned construction site. Marco and Jake had been there before, during the day time, and both knew that it was rumoured to be home to homeless bums and perhaps even escaped convicts. It wasn't the only way home, but it was the fastest, and the six were inexplicitly drawn to the place, despite their fear.

As they walked along in fearful silence, Tobias noticed a strange light in the sky that seemed to be drawing steadily closer. Frightened, yet curious, they watched in undisguised amazement as the light revealed itself to be some strange sort of ship. An alien ship?

The ship crash-landed and was silent until the door opened, revealing an odd-looking being. According to Jake, he resembled a deer, coloured blue and tan, with an upper body similar to a humans, but with far weaker arms. It had a triangular-shaped head and no mouth, and eyes sprouted from the top of it, resting on top of stalks that grew from the head. Glittery green eyes peered out from the mouthless face, and bat-like ears stuck out from the side of its head. But what the eye was more immediately drawn to was the long, snakelike tail that twisted in the air, a deadly-looking blade glistening at the top.

And he was hurt, a long gash bleeding bluish blood on his side. Pain was broadcasting from his very thoughts, and it was obvious to the six teenagers that alien or not, he was dying.

They attempted to help him, to no avail. He would die. But before it was too late, he warned them about the danger their planet was facing; speaking directly to their minds as his species had no mouths. He told them about a twisted race called the Yeerks, which resembled slugs, a blind, deaf, and mute parasitic race who took over other minds to compensate for their weaknesses. The kids, despairing of the fate of their planet, wondered what they should do. They could turn to the government; who would believe them? Their friends, relatives, siblings would all think them crazy! But Elfangor- the alien- presented a solution to their problems. Albeit, a possibly worse solution than going to the government, but a solution nonetheless.

In his dying moments, he told Jake to go into his ship and locate a small blue box. The box was called the Escifal Device, and it was an alien technology that gave whoever touched it the power to morph into any animal they touched. It would help them fight the Yeerks; resist them until the Andalites- his people- came to save them.

Though they all had their own opinions on the matter, they instantly turned to Jake, who at last decided to do it. Marco, however, was very reluctant, and only joined the others because of Jake's decision.

As they absorbed the power to morph, more lights appeared in the sky, which Elfangor identified as being Yeerks. The six ran and hid behind some old equipment, and were forced to witness the confrontation between another Andalite who called himself Visser Three- a controller, someone whose body had abducted by the Yeerks- and the dying Elfangor. And then they saw something horrifying happen. Visser Three began to morph, to use the power so recently given them. His entire body transformed into a terrifying alien monster, and, vowing to Elfangor that he would trap and infest every member of his family, he picked up the struggling alien… and ate him. Whole.

Marco began to throw up, alerting the Yeerks of their presence. However, it was Jake who came up with and idea of what to do. He ordered them to split up, then encouraged the Yeerks to follow the more athletic of the six- in this case, Jake and Rachel. By doing this, Jake unofficially made himself leader; a position he neither wanted nor asked for.

Jake was a very serious kid, and the war seemed to age him as the series progressed. The burden of leadership, of duty remained forever with him, especially when he discovered that his older brother was a human controller. Though he never managed to save Tom, he never stopped hoping.

Marco, Jake's best friend, was a kid who never seemed to take things seriously, but when it mattered, Marco would find away to work it out. He often called himself ruthless, cold, an idiotic teenager with a death wish.

Marco's home life was very difficult. He lived alone with his father and no siblings, his mother having died when he was eleven or twelve years old. She went out alone, on a stormy night, to ride her boat. Her body was never found.

Marco's father lost it after that. A man who was once a happy, intelligent engineer soon became a depressed old man, alive only because of his son. Marco had to do the chores, buy the groceries, and watch helplessly as his father spiraled down in depression. Knowing that he was the only reason his dad found the will to live, Marco was by far the most reluctant to join the war, because if he died, there would be no one for his father to hold on to.

Later in the series, Marco discovered that his mother had never really died, and instead had been captured by the Yeerks and infested with Edriss 562, a high-ranking Yeerk with the title of Visser One. She was the one who had taken the boat out, and had then been taken by Yeerks to the Yeerk mother ship out in space. Marco was overjoyed, yet hurt, because his mother was infested. But, now Marco had a reason to fight. Later on, he managed to rescue his mother, and though his father was all ready involved with another woman name Nora, Marco's math teacher, he and Marco's mother were reunited.

Rachel was Jake's cousin, and often described as perfect, beautiful in every way, a runway model who belonged on the cover of _Seventeen_. However, Rachel was far more than a simple air-headed mall-rat. Rachel was very sarcastic and tough, for no apparent reason other than the fact that her mother was a lawyer. Of all the Animorphs, she actually seemed to enjoy the fight, the adrenaline rush of battle. Her main morph was first an African elephant, and later, a grizzly bear. She had two younger sisters name Sara and Jordan. Her parents had divorced before the war, and she was very loyal to her father. Her relationships with the other Animorphs were strained. She participated in an on-going feud with Marco to lighten up the others before a fight, and later in the series was involved in a romantic relationship with Tobias. She and Jake were often at odds with each other during the war. In the end of the series, Rachel gives her life for the fight.

Cassie was Rachel's best friend, an African-American girl described as short and cute. Her passion was animals. Both of her parents were vets, her mother working at the zoo in the local amusement park and her father working at the wildlife rehabilitation clinic in her barn. Cassie was the key to getting many of their morphs, since she was able to get into the zoo easily. Cassie had many moral qualms about entering the war, but the fate of humanity eventually won out over the fate of the Yeerks. She was often counseling the other Animorphs with their problems with no one to help her with her own. She and Jake became involved as well, sharing their first kiss in book #26, The Attack. Near the end of the series, Jake proposed to her, but Cassie refused, saying that when the war was over, Jake would never be the same. Her suspicions proved correct when, after the war, Jake became depressed and rarely spoke to anyone. She later became involved with Ronnie Chambers, whom I kill in my own twisted version of Animorphs. Okay, that was uncalled for.

Tobias was a mystery to begin with, a young, lost orphan boy who sometimes lived with an abusive uncle and sometimes with his slave-driving aunt across the country. Neither wanted him. In school, Tobias was a natural bully-magnet, and though a good student and an artist, quiet and shy, with a love to read, he was largely ignored or tormented by other students. He first met Jake with his head stuck in a toilet, two bullies planning to flush his head. Jake stepped in and saved him.

The official story of Tobias's family was that his father died and his mother walked out on him. Later in the series, Tobias learns that this is not true. His father was not human, but alien, and he had met him. That's right. His father was Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, the alien who gave them the power to morph. Elfangor made the choice to leave Earth, his son and wife Loren, to return to the Andalite fleet and rejoin the war Tobias's mother, Loren, was later injured in a car accident, damaging her brain as well as her eyes, leaving her blind and with total amnesia. Under these conditions, she could not raise Tobias and was forced to give him to her sister. Though Tobias later moved in with his uncle and lived only a few short blocks away from her, she never visited him, frightened of the pain such a visit would cause both of them. Tobias later rescued his mother and healed her vision with the morphing power, though her memory was never fully restored.

Tobias was very sad as a human, and intentionally or not, soon had the difficulties of human life taken away, to be replaced with the difficulties of survival. In the first book o the series, Tobias and the others were warned not to stay in morphs for over two hours, for they would become forever trapped in that body. But Tobias was trapped inside the Yeerk pool, unable to demorph or escape. Because of that, Tobias was forever trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk, though in one book he was given back his morphing powers by a powerful being who called himself the Ellimist. This posed a new set of problems for him: he could become human again, but he would never be able to morph after that, and would be useless to the war. Against Rachel's better judgment, Tobias remained in hawk form for the rest of his recorded life.

Tobias created his first real friendship ironically not with a human, but an Andalite _aristh_ named Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, called Ax. The Animorphs rescued Ax early in the series, and he had helped them fight with his knowledge of other races and technology. However, Ax was often regarded as the outsider, and at first, was not really trusted. Later on he became good friends with the others, and learned much about humans. He felt he could relate to Tobias, because of their outcast status. Near the end of the series Ax built a transmitter and was able to contact the Andalite fleet. He contacted them privately for a time, until he received orders he could not obey.

Ax had always lived his life in the shadow of his older brother, Elfangor, who was also Tobias's father. In the end of the series, though, Ax became well known in the Andalite fleet because of his war efforts.

There are many other important things I could say in this essay, but will not. The things I have left out you will either have to research about intensely, or better: read the books for yourself. _Animorphs_ is a truly amazing series, and I am sorry that it had to end.

Six kids. Six idiotic teenagers with a death wish.

Jake. Marco. Rachel. Cassie. Tobias. Ax.

Who are they?

What are they?

They're the _Animorphs._


End file.
